Penny Dreadful (18 page)

Jasper stopped to kneel and examine the dead thing up close. Penny peered over the other girl’s shoulder, and her stomach turned when she saw there were tiny maggots wriggling in the animal’s eyeholes. She looked away. How could Jasper stand it? It was revolting.

“Oh!” exclaimed Jasper, crouching closely to inspect the dead rodent. “What a waste!” Then she took off one sneaker and wrapped the tiny mouse gently in a dirty sock.

Penny stared. Luella wrinkled her nose.

“Sorry, guys,” said Jasper, putting her shoe back on.
“Maybe I can go treasure hunting with you another time, but right now I should probably get this little guy home before he really starts to smell.” To Penny she said, “My house is that way,” and pointed down a narrow, pebbly dirt side road choked with trees. “But it was nice to meet you!” she said with a friendly wave.

“Oh—okay,” said Penny, surprised by Jasper’s sudden departure. “It was—umm—nice to meet you too. And yeah, uh, maybe another time.”

“That’d be great!” said Jasper, with a smile so kind and warm that Penny felt a little bit bad at how relieved she was to see her wave goodbye.

Her relief was short-lived because almost immediately Luella was running after Jasper, calling, “Hey! Wait! Wait up, you goof! We’ll walk you home! A walk is a walk, and we can look for Blackrabbit’s gold any old day. Come on, Penny!”

Penny watched Luella run off after Jasper. She didn’t know what to do. The last thing she wanted was to follow this strange girl and her dead mouse, but she couldn’t bear to walk away from Luella either, and she wasn’t sure she could find her way back alone anyway. She followed Luella slowly toward Jasper, frowning all the way.

When she caught up with the other two girls, Jasper’s
face lit up. “You guys are so nice,” she said. “If you want me to, I’ll make us all lunch. My mom and dad started a pot of meaty surprise in the Crock-Pot before they left for work this morning. I bet it’s nice and tender by now.”

“Um, I don’t know,” said Penny, not liking the sound of lunch with Jasper any more than the sound of
meaty surprise
. “I don’t think I’m supposed to eat at a stranger’s house.” This was true, in theory, though lately she’d been doing all kinds of things she wasn’t sure she was supposed to do.

Luella argued, “Jasper’s not a
stranger
, Penny!”

Penny could think of no further excuse, so she ended up following Luella and Jasper down yet another winding road and out of town. As she trudged along glumly behind Jasper and Luella, past dilapidated houses and rusted old cars, Penny looked nervously at the sock Jasper carried so carefully and knew that no matter what, she would not be able to choke down a bowl of meaty surprise. Penny forgot her jealousy as she thought about the mystery lunch awaiting her.

It didn’t help that when she sped up to rejoin Luella and Jasper, she heard Jasper say, “Yeah, I actually froze a few of the ones I found last winter. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to put them up until spring.”

Penny cringed.

It also didn’t help that when they walked up the steps of Jasper’s house, the house was all dark and spooky-looking. It sat alone on the edge of a large green field, far from neighbors. Large elm trees cast shadows over the house, so that when the three girls arrived at the top of the porch steps, what sunlight there was fled their shoulders. Jasper reached for the door, and a cacophony of noises assaulted Penny’s ears: hoots and shrieks and barks and whines and yowls!

Penny held back as Jasper entered the house and Luella followed. The screen door slammed shut behind them. They appeared to have forgotten all about her.

Alone on the porch, Penny tried to remind herself that Luella was her friend. There was no reason to feel bad. Luella was her friend. Luella was her friend. Penny knew that. She did. Luella
was
her friend.

Staring at the closed screen door and listening to the animal noises, Penny wished she could turn around and go home, but if she didn’t go inside soon, Luella would probably tease her forever. Penny took a deep breath and placed a hand on the door handle. She opened it with a creak and stepped gingerly inside, where she found a disconcerting menagerie. An owl flapped about her head as a squirrel scampered past her feet. A cat curled and slunk upon the mantelpiece, and two tired-looking dogs
loped in from another room, tongues lolling. A skunk shuffled off into the dining room.

Penny could hear other noises too, and she wondered if these animals would also become “meaty surprises.” Surely even a family who ate possum wouldn’t cook
dogs
, would they?

Penny fought through the sea of creatures, found her way to the kitchen, and wrestled open a plastic gate to join the others. Jasper, wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves, appeared to be washing the maggots from the dead mouse in a big kitchen sink. “Sorry about the gate!” she called out. “It’s to keep my sister, Koko, from poking the babies.”

“Babies?” asked Penny, puzzled. Then the smell hit her. All through the room a strong scent was wafting, a deep tomatoey odor filled with spices Penny couldn’t identify. It was a rich, warm smell—a delicious smell.

Penny took a deep whiff. “Is
that
meaty surprise?”

Jasper looked over from her unpleasant job and said, “Yup, doesn’t it smell great? My grandmother’s recipe from Hungary. She taught my mom to cook it.” Jasper went back to scrubbing. “You’ll never guess what the surprise is,” she laughed.

Penny inhaled again. She was almost certain she knew what the surprise was, so she was confused. She
found it hard to believe that stewed possum smelled so scrumptious.

“Hey, Penny, look at this,” called Luella from the floor, distracting Penny from her thoughts. “You have to see this!”

Penny knelt down beside her friend. When she peeked inside the box, her grouchiness faded away and she let out a soft coo. “Oh,” she said. “Ohhhhhh!”

“I know, right?” Luella agreed, reaching down to stroke the baby animals cuddled into an old sweater at the bottom of the box. They were nestled together sweetly, and though they made small hissing noises at the sight of Luella’s big hand, Penny couldn’t resist reaching for them too.

“What are they?” she asked, looking at the squirmy pink-and-gray animals.

“Possums,” said Luella. “Baby ones.”

Staring at the babies, Penny sat back on her heels, puzzled. What did this mean? As much as she didn’t really like Jasper, Penny simply could not believe that she intended to eat these adorable creatures too. She knew, in theory, that every hamburger or chicken nugget started out its life as a baby of one kind or another, but she couldn’t see how anyone could raise an animal like this and then throw it into a Crock-Pot.

She looked over at Jasper, who was wrapping the cleaned mouse in paper. Penny could no longer keep her thoughts to herself. “You aren’t—you aren’t really going to
eat
them, are you?” she asked.

Jasper stopped wrapping and stared at Penny like she was crazy. “Huh?” she said. “What are you
talking
about?”

“I mean, they’re just babies …,” Penny continued.

Luella snorted a laugh. “Well, young flesh
is
tender.”

Penny turned to her, horrified.

Luella burst out laughing. “
Joking
, I’m joking!” she said. “What
are
you talking about? Why would anyone eat a baby possum?”

Penny stammered, and looked from Luella to Jasper. “B-b-but the meaty surprise—”

Jasper looked truly flabbergasted. “Of
course
I’m not going to eat them! I’m going to
keep
them! In case you can’t tell, we like animals around here. A lot. We’re vegetarians. My mom’s a vet, for gosh sakes. My dad’s a wildlife photographer. Koko was named after a gorilla.”

Luella stared at Penny. “Jeez, Penny,
really?
You
really
thought that?”

“I just thought—well, I saw you carrying a dead possum,” Penny blurted out. “Last week, when we were first driving into town. And I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” said Jasper. “I was rescuing a family of baby possums.
These
baby possums. Someone hit and killed the mother, and I noticed that her belly was rippling when I walked past, so I took her home to save the little bitty ones inside her pouch. It was the easiest way to carry them all. And there they are,” she added, pointing to the box. “Possums are marsupials, you know.”

Penny blushed as she continued. “Then what about the mouse?” she asked, gesturing to the neatly wrapped mouse in Jasper’s hand. “
That’s
not a pet. Is it? What are you going to do with
that?
”

“Ugh!
Gross!
” said Luella with a shiver. “She’s not going to
eat
it.”

But Jasper seemed to think it was a fair question. “Now
that,
” she admitted thoughtfully, “that
is
a little weird. Even my mom thinks so. But I don’t care. I just decided it’s nicer to bury roadkill than to let them rot and get chewed up by other animals or run over by a trillion cars until they turn into hairy dried pancakes on the pavement.” As she said this, she fitted the wrapped mouse into a cardboard box she had waiting on the counter beside the sink. “I have a little graveyard out back. My mom calls it my death collection.”

Luella snorted. “That
is
a little bananas, Jasper. I’m
not going to lie.” She turned to Penny and added, “You’ll get used to Jasper’s obsession. I remember one time, in first grade, Jasper brought in a huge collection of dead bugs, all pinned to a corkboard, for show-and-tell. Mrs. Johnson just about hit the roof! It was great.”

Penny couldn’t help giggling.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy,” said Luella. “But
you
, Penny, are even crazier! Did you really think she’d eat a dead, maggoty mouse? Who would
do
that?”

Penny blushed. “So then, all those
other
animals …” She motioned to all the beasts panting and scraping and chattering on the other side of the plastic baby gate.

Jasper burst into peals of laughter, a musical sound. “Those are my pets, of course—at least for a while!” She waved toward the dogs and the squirrels and the snuffly skunk. “That’s Rudolpho and Jim and Old Blue and the scamper twins, Chitter and Chatter. And
that,
” she added, pointing up at the owl, “is Who. I rescued all of them. They were all hurt when I found them. My mom helps me with medicine and stuff, but I feed them and bathe them and take care of them myself until they’re ready to go back into the woods.”

“Wow,” said Penny. “I’ve never known anyone with a pet owl before. I’ve never even read a
book
about anyone with a pet owl.”

“I bet you never knew anyone with a pet horse either,” said Luella.

“Well, no,” admitted Penny, “but
that
I’ve read a lot of books about.”

“Oh,” said Jasper. “Wait until you meet Mr. Clop! He’s why we have to live all the way out here on the edge of town, so he has space to run.”

“And the things you froze last winter?” asked Penny, giving up completely but still curious about the misunderstanding.

“Oh, you mean the birds I was talking about earlier? They flew into a closed window last December, but the ground was too hard to bury them deep enough that the dogs wouldn’t dig them up again,” said Jasper. “So I saved them for spring in our deep freeze. My folks nearly killed me. My dad unwrapped one by accident, thinking it was a burrito. Boy, was
he
surprised!”

“Ha!” added Luella.

Penny looked down at the baby possums. They’d stopped hissing and squirming for a minute, and one even let her lay a hand on his back. She could feel his heart beating through his whole body. “I feel stupid,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just figured with all those dead animals around, the meaty surprise was—”

Jasper laughed even louder. “The surprise in meaty
surprise is that there’s
no meat,
” she explained. “It’s beans and veggies and tomatoes and stuff.”

“To be honest,” added Luella thoughtfully, “people around here
do
make varmint stew sometimes. Full of possum and squirrel and other stuff too. I’ve tried it, and it’s okay—”

Now it was Jasper’s turn to be grossed out. “Ew, Luella. Now
that’s
gross!” she said, reaching into a cabinet for three bowls. “Right, Penny?”

Penny nodded at her new friend. “
Disgusting,
” she said with a happy smile. “Let’s eat!”

W
HAT
W
ORK
I
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